Re: Expressing ages

In Portuguese, age is "possessed" by people. Hence "Eu tenho 20 anos", "I have 20
years". I know that Spanish has the same pattern, and I believe French and
Italian do as well.

You could also say "Minha idade é 20 anos", "my age is 20 years", but that's not usual.

João Ricardo Oliveira
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rachel Klippenstein 
  To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU 
  Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 7:56 PM
  Subject: Expressing ages


  Hi,

  I'm trying to figure out how age is expressed in
  Ikanirae Seru, and I'm interested in knowing how other
  languages do it.

  The English expression "I am X (years old)" somehow
  seems rather illogical to me.

  I also thought of "I have X years"
  and "I am of X years",
  but neither seems quite right.

  My current favourite is to have special verb (let's
  call it "BYEO" - I'm not sure exactly what it'd be)
  that means "am years old", so the expression would be
  "I BYEO X".  That would be a nice short way to express
  the important issue of age, which I suspect would be
  especially important to the inventors of Ikanirae
  Seru, since they are kids.

  Rachel

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